E-mail vs. RSS

June 9 2004

Since my brief appearance at Inbox 2004 last week, I've been thinking a lot about one of the hot debate topics from the conference -- e-mail vs. RSS.  It seems that there is a school of thought that e-mail is dead or approaching death, because the sheer volume overwhelms, or the signal to noise ratio is low (spam, newsletters, useless cc:-the-world exercises), or it's not fast enough, or whatever.  And some suggest that RSS is the logical and perfect and nirvana-esque replacement for e-mail -- Steve Gillmor over at eWeek has been particularly vocal on this point.  So the question came up on the panel I was on at Inbox last week of how we view this whole RSS vs. e-mail thing, as it apparently did many times over at the conference.
It feels to me that RSS is just about to hit the peak of the hype cycle, after which we will all realize that it is an interesting and useful protocol but not a paradigm shift.  Even the attempts to make it better (RSS2, Atom, etc) are not going to make RSS out to be some kind of lingua franca of the future the way e-mail is (or was?).  The more I've thought about it, the more unconvinced I am that RSS is or should be viewed as the game changer....

  • RSS adoption is a on a maturing path.  Every day, I encounter more RSS feeds that might be useful.  The more sites that add feeds, the more time I spend in my reader (which happens to be a Notes database).  But it could easily get to the point where I spend an hour a day reading RSS feeds -- on top of the hours I spend reading and processing e-mail.  Where did that time come from?
  • RSS is a completely unfiltered process.  While some readers (such as the one I use) have the ability to categorize your feeds, ultimately, something new coming in from joebobsblog.com appears on equal footing with the headline from BBC.co.uk indicating that Ronald Reagan has died.  E-mail has evolved over the years to have rules, agents, content filtering, prioritization, mood stamps, sender-based color highlighting, etc. -- all of which could be added to RSS readers.  But then how would that differ from e-mail so much?
  • RSS is succeeding now because of trust.  I add feeds to my reader from sites I'm interested in, or in some cases need to do my job effectively.  What happens the day the humans on the other end of that feed change the rules?  I don't think it has happened yet, but when eWeek or Network World or a blogger decide that RSS would be a great push medium for advertising, the game is over.  We'll spend the same countelss hours trying to separate wheat from chaff in RSS readers that we all already do in e-mail.  You might say - well just delete the feed at that point.  Sure, but what if the other 90% of that feed's content was important to you?  Now what?
Don't get me wrong -- I think the introduction of RSS has been a huge positive for the web and for content.  But these heated debates over whether it is revolution or evolution don't really get me going like they do some others.  I think RSS and e-mail both will be around for a long time -- and that e-mail is far from done evolving yet.
You might also be interested in reading Christopher Knight's 22 Reasons why email is not dead.  One of his assertions helped shape my thinking on this topic over the last week -- "How many days before spammers invade and turn the RSS world upside down because it does not meet their needs?"  Very thorough and reasoned essay, check it out.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [24]

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  1. 1  Kitty  | 6/9/2004 7:29:09 AM

    I found Christopher's essay really interesting. His fifth reason was one of the ones that really hit home with me:

    "When tele-marketers discovered that the telephone could be used to solicit customers, the telephone medium did not die. Just because spammers have clogged the value of email does not mean the medium is over. When postal junk mail became common, the post office did not die, nor did postal mail. For that matter, email did not replace the post office or direct marketing."

    Really each successive technology will be targetted by those marketeers, but that does not mean that the medium will cease to exist, just that it will continue to evolve and rise to that challenge.

  1. 2  Tim Latta  | 6/9/2004 4:58:30 PM

    Your thoughts track pretty closely with mine as far as the state of RSS and it's coexistance with email.

    .

    Please keep it low and don't jinx things mentioning 'advertising', spam, etc. in the context of RSS. You are right that when that happens, this 'new' thing will be ruined.

  1. 3   http://texturadesign.com/archives/000169.htm | 6/10/2004 9:06:19 AM

    "Brill asks, “Where did that time come from?” and I’ve been thinking, “man, I don’t have time for that.”"

  1. 4  Jason Lefkowitz http://www.antseyeview.com | 6/10/2004 12:25:32 PM

    I have to say, I disagree with the "22 Reasons" article -- so much so that I wrote up the reasons on my blog:

    http://www.antseyeview.com/archives/001186.html

    Thanks for bringing it to my attention, though!

  1. 5  Rob Witte  | 6/10/2004 12:48:08 PM

    I see RSS as a game-changer because it puts control in the hands of the receiver. If a feed's signal-to-noise ratio drops too low, I can unsubscribe and find info elsewhere.

    I think e-mail will evolve to look more like RSS (with some sort of ranking or receiver trust mechanism), but I don't see RSS supplanting e-mail entirely. Ad-hoc communication will remainn and I don't think RSS is the right mechanism to handle that.

  1. 6  J. Toran http://radio.weblogs.com/0101546/ | 6/10/2004 2:32:42 PM

    Mr. Brill,

    "What happens the day the humans on the other end of that feed change the rules? I don't think it has happened yet, but when eWeek or Network World or a blogger decide that RSS would be a great push medium for advertising, the game is over."

    Joi Ito did a li'l experiment on this, a while back, which broke all the aggregators. And it's happening as we "speak", as discussion of what HTML is gonna be allowed, and where, progresses.

    ===> What RSS *may* allow is for the "terms" to be "renegotiated" between consumers and producers.. of both content AND advertising... I dunno, but I sure DO know that the difference between PointCast and RSS is that one is push and one is pull (implemented via push-pull-polling feeds).

    I didn't get chance to read Christopher Knight's piece, but things don't GET REPLACED. However, email has put a serious crimp in snail-mail. Iow, the importance of different media-conduits WILL shift (and mebbe 10 or 20 years out mail will ONLY be used for packages and such?).

  1. 7  Brian St. Pierre http://bstpierre.org/ | 6/10/2004 4:10:32 PM

    Ed -

    I blogged a bit about signal vs. noise in RSS feeds. Mail filters are very mature and well understood. Same with Usenet newsreaders. (Remember article scoring in some of the better readers like slrn?) RSS readers are not there yet, but some of us are working on it.

    See http://bstpierre.org/blog/00000459.html for my post related to this topic.

  1. 8  Chad http://chadwilliams.blogspot.com | 6/10/2004 5:16:50 PM

    I don't get why people think a text ad in a feed is going to ruin RSS/atom based syndication. Do banner ads ruin News.com or eWeek?

  1. 9  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 6/10/2004 5:24:08 PM

    because they can be tuned out/ignored by the reader with no keyboard/mouse action. Spam in mail or RSS or IM requires an action on the part of the uesr.

  1. 10  Bill Flitter www.pheedo.com | 6/10/2004 6:26:19 PM

    Define SPAM? I think it is an over-used term for anything we don't want, namely any advertising we don't want. SPAM doesn't equal advertising. If we are all willing to pay for the content we receive that is a different story. Publishers need to generate revenue, especially if they are sending full content to your news reader. If you provide your services for free, see how long you sustain your lifestyle. Same with publishers. Relevancy in advertising is what's important. You mentioned banners are okay in feeds because you can ignore them. What isn't okay?

  1. 11  BillSaysThis http://www.billsaysthis.com | 6/10/2004 8:23:08 PM

    "What happens the day the humans on the other end of that feed change the rules? I don't think it has happened yet, but when eWeek or Network World or a blogger decide that RSS would be a great push medium for advertising, the game is over."

    Check out the feed from sci-fi/action (sort of) movie news site comingsoon.net, they've already crossed the line. But for now I get interesting stuff from them and the ads and graphics don't quite reduce the benefit passed the cost.

  1. 12  Alex Barnett http://weblogs.asp.net/alexbarn/archive/2004/05/22/139461.aspx | 6/11/2004 12:31:04 AM

    Email v RSS mmatrix here:

    http://weblogs.asp.net/alexbarn/archive/2004/05/22/139461.aspx

  1. 13  Ulrich Schwanitz http://izynews.com | 6/11/2004 1:46:14 AM

    Ed and all,

    I like your arguments and we actually see RSS feeds as an evolution of eMail.

    Our IzyNews system (http://izynews.com) acts as an RSS reader integrated into eMail. The goal is to completely blur the difference.

    IzyNews is a lot more than a simple converter/forwarder. We believe that for mainstream adoption of RSS technologies, it is critical to make it an integral part of what users already know.

  1. 14  Dominic Sayers  | 6/11/2004 4:02:57 AM

    <p><a href="http://p.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?o=rss&c=Offbeat%20news">Moreover Offbeat News</a></p>

    <p>The last item in the list whenever you refresh the feed is always an advert. This started yesterday so I have unsubscribed.</p>

  1. 15  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 6/11/2004 6:58:51 AM

  1. 16  Colman Carpenter  | 6/11/2004 9:34:09 AM

    I don't understand why there is such a feeling that a rise in RSS means the death knell for email ? There are such huge differences between the two concepts that I, for one, can easily see how they can co-exist. For sure RSS can replace 'some' email, but for information providers it makes sense now to offer RSS as a complementary method of getting the information rather than a black or white alternative.

    Also, spammers will find ways of utilising any 'effective' means of communication, whether it be email, phone or RSS. The effort they expend on doing so will be in direct relation to the cost and effectiveness of the medium. If email was to start dying off then I would guarantee that spammers would desert it in droves for whatever the current method of communication is.

  1. 17  Rob Witte  | 6/11/2004 2:51:54 PM

    I use NewsGator for my RSS feeds (and posting to my weblog). I rather enjoy having both RSS and e-mail show up in one client. Often, I will forward weblog posts to others in e-mail or quote from e-mail newsletters (like Gartner) in my weblog. I see them as quite complimentary.

    I make the distinction as preferring recurring communications via RSS (where the receiver controls the flow) and ad-hoc communications via e-mail (where the sender controls the flow). I believe both will remain important.

  1. 18  J. Toran  | 6/11/2004 10:08:36 PM

    "I make the distinction as preferring recurring communications via RSS (where the receiver controls the flow) and ad-hoc communications via e-mail (where the sender controls the flow). I believe both will remain important."

    True, both will remain important.. How and how long a different matter.

    However: It's actually a myth that RSS allows significantly more control over inflow/outflow of communication.

    Each person still decides what to read, in both cases, and when.

    Btw, as far as why do two of anything compete? Competition's an ugly word to some generations, but it still can't be prevented from recurring in reality.

  1. 19  Rob Witte  | 6/12/2004 12:07:04 AM

    "It's actually a myth that RSS allows significantly more control over inflow/outflow of communication."

    How is it a myth? If the signal-to-noise ratio for an RSS feed becomes unacceptable, I can unsubscribe from that feed and receive no further communications from that source. Seems like receiver control to me. Am I missing an important angle to this?

  1. 20  Adam Gaffin http://www.nwfusion.com | 6/14/2004 8:23:34 AM

    As one of the imperial storm troopers, I guess I have to ask: As a for-profit concern, how do we make a return on our investment in RSS? Sure, we can hope that people will click on the links to open up ad-laden HTML articles, but so far our experience is that not a whole lot of people do that - it seems that often, the blurb itself is enough to satisify one's info-needs. How about customized RSS feeds, i.e., where you get to set the frequency (right now our feeds are updated once a day) and keywords of feeds, in exchange for a monthly or yearly subscription? Other approaches? I know information wants to be free and all, but surely there's some middle ground.

  1. 21  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 6/14/2004 10:35:59 AM

    it's that indeed e-mail newsletters and web pages themselves have found ways to adopt over time and weave advertising in to the mix without being overwhelming (though popup ads sure do suck). I don't have the miracle suggestion, and I wasn't singling Network World out in anyway (I'm sure you realize this). My point was simply that if I start seeing feeds where the actual "articles" are ads, I'm going to be less inclined to stay subscribed to them. If there is a way blend the content and commerical via RSS, I'd be open to that (as I'm sure others would).

  1. 22  J. Toran  | 6/14/2004 1:47:32 PM

    "How is it a myth? If the signal-to-noise ratio for an RSS feed becomes unacceptable, I can unsubscribe from that feed and receive no further communications from that source. Seems like receiver control to me. Am I missing an important angle to this?"

    If the signal-to-noise ratio for ANYTHING becomes unacceptable:

    1) In email, a person stops reading

    2) In voice, a person stops listening

    3) Or, in either, person can just politely nod head, at appropriate intervals...;-)

    Iow, it's a myth who controls your eyeballs and ears and purchasing habits, which would be you.

    UNLESS, you cede control to somebody else, which is also your choice, however.

  1. 23  jt@ee.net  | 6/14/2004 1:51:18 PM

    "I know information wants to be free and all, but surely there's some middle ground."

    Not to Lessig et al.

    That's the problem. My 10-year-old Nephew has something of an understanding that right and wrong are to be NEGOTIATED. People have learned (incorrectly) that the ONLY way to get what they want is to DEMAND FAR MORE than they need..

    ..That way the might get what they want.

    This is false.

    You want a middle-ground?? Quit listening to Lawrence Lessig, Dave Winer, and all those rich-frickin'-bloggers who say information wants to be free.

    Most are NOT computer-folk, and/or they never learned that every single bit of information COSTS. That's how I learned KISS, by experience.

    Dunno if I have any better ideas, but might.

    Who knows this stuff, for certain? Fools.

  1. 24  Post deleted  | 6/1/2005 10:09:32 AM

    Commercial posting deleted.